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Solidarity Pamphlet n.40 



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- 1 - \ 



In a waVit is clearly artificial to try to isolate the role of 
women la any se*^ of historical events. There are reasons, however. 
f^^Lt^T^ s V.L sti11 te ■*• ^om time to time; for one thing 
it cannot be assumeo\that when historians write about "people" or "work- 
ers" they mean women to nnything like the same extent as men. It is 
only recently that the history of women has begun to be studied witt the 
attention appropriate to women's significance - constituting as wedo 
approximately half of society at all levels, (i) 

(Faber^ Faber "?w? T" *** Revolution md «■» ^ivil War fa g^. 
particinaMofof 9? )f It" ET " nd Kmiie Temime state that the 
Sal a^d tL"ZT " the .* aBiah Evolution of I 93 6 was massive and 

SortmL^etaUs or Sif f* ,°f h0 " de6P the *•"*«**« -»t. 

where, buftt sour d°o K^S tfSta.^ ^ ^ 

In the process of examining how wo^en^ruf le ^£!+ *? ^^ to « ethei - 

coSions^^^^S havfr ele^e" foV^b T ^ ^ ** 
as well as for the prfsent-day w^eVs moment! ^'^a* 3 * *« 

and repre^ive'inlhe'ext^me^S "°T P f ° r t0 I936 "*" «W»«**- 
and when improvement: id" ^ gj ^^'^ ** *"***«* &> 
to women. Figures from the T,7=+,-V + ! = "2* ™ ys entlre ly beneficial 
S.O.Payne, SSLto «^ JffTf S ° ClaleS (quoted to 
that in the decaa Tiqi^ ^' Weldenfeld & »i°°lson, I 97 0), show 

by only 67.* 2MSS " VT*™^? ^ WOaen,S 

could go to meltings a£ gclio^Ml ° Arthur Koestler, that the' men 
5 P.m., prepare ^^,^ i ^1^ h S 1 ^? 8 <^^f»/« •* 

been iSoedT^eltureTL^^ °°^sation had, however, 
Politically, the Z£S£3£t5Z^££g ^T^ ™' 
sexes at 23, a radical departure faTtS « I9 ^ bought votes f or both 
has been said (by Alvare^^r^^^ a ^*' " 



- 2 - 



merely doubled the power of her husband or confessor. But the situation 
was being modified. The Republic brought measures of education and 
secularisation, including provision for divorce if "just cause" were 
shown. Despite the weight of internalised inferiority under which they 
must have laboured, many women were starting to involve themselves act- 
ively, in politics. (3) 

t - -■■■ On the libertarian side, the strong anarchist movement incorporated 
_a, certain awareness of the necessity to envisage changed relationships 
between people. For its adherents, the abolition of legal marriage at 
.least was -on the agenda. It is more difficult 'to assess to what extent 
their personal lives embodied a transformation in attitudes, but it seems 
that the particular problems of women were nox a priority concern. (4) 

In fact they were not much of a priority with anyone. Margarita 
Nelkin, a Socialist who was to become a deputy in the Cortes, wrote about 
The Social Condition of Women in Spain (Barcelona, 1922) and women in the 
Cortes (Madrid, 1951): there was a movement for women's rights in the 
early twenties, but it had a reformist and careerist orientation, based 
on women in the professions. For anarchists, reformist", minimal or 
transitional programme was more or less out. The focus was on thorough- 
going social revolution. Unfortunately, any theoretical discussion of 
what such a revolution might involve was often out too , in favour of an 
-assumption that things would work out spontaneously in the best possible 
way. 



flMUJJQfl 



In the response to the military insurrection of July 18, 1936 
against the Republic there was indeed a powerful element of spontaneity. 
Events overtook the parties and leaders, including the "leading militants" 
of the CNT-FAI (syndicalist national Confederation of Labour, and the 
Spanish Anarchist Federation). One of the latter, Federica Montseny, ' 
alluded later to "the revolution we all desired but did not expect so 
soon". Women played a full part. In the view of Alvarez del Vayo, 
they were dominant in the response to the uprising and formed the back- 
bone of resistance. Broue and Temime tell us they were present every- 
where - on committees, in- the militias, in the front line. In the early 
battles of the civil ■war, women fought alongside men as a matter of ' 
course. (5) 

Women were necessarily and naturally involved in the developing 
social revolution, in the collectives which established themselves in 
town and countryside, after the flight of many bosses and landlords. 
This fact, implies certain changes, in their way of living, their degree 
of alienation in work and leisure (if they had any leisure), their state 



- 3 - 

of mind, the attitudes of others to them. But the transformation in 
social relations, particularly in the status of women in the community, 
was a long way from being total, even in areas where libertarians had the 
greatest control over their own situation. 

A simple index of the continued inferiority of a woman's position 
is provided by statistics on wages in the collectives. Women were often 
jaid at a lower rate than men. (6) To give some examples: 

a) In «the retail trade in Puigcerda, men earned 50 pesetas a week, 
and women- 35 » 

b) In the Segorbe agricultural collective, men earned 5 pesetas a 
day compared with 4 for a single wanan and 2 for a wife; 

c) In Muniesa, men received I peseta a day, women and girls 75 
centimos, and those under 10 years got 50 centimos. (7) 

Many of the agricultural collectives agreed a "family wage", varying with 
the numbers involved on the principle "To each according to his needs". 
A household where man and wife both worked because they had no children 
might receive 5 pesetas per day, while one where only the man was seen as 
working for the collective, as his wife had to care for 2,3 or 4 children, 
might receive 6,7 or 8 pesetas. (8) According to Hugh Thomas (9) there 
was /almost everywhere a separate scale of pay for working husbands and 
wives, with different bonuses for working sons, minors, and invalids, 
and separate rates for bachelors, widows and retired couples. Rates 
might vary from 4 to 12 pesetas a day. Sometimes certain categories of 
women did comparatively well: in Villaverde, widows were accorded the 
same as bachelors, plus child allowances - on the other hand, bachelors 
generally had free access to the communal restaurant, while others had 
to : pay one peseta. 

I 

The idea of a scale of wages directly discriminating against women 
is not, then, accurate in every case. But there is clear evidence of a 
widespread assumption, based on the concept of the patriarchal family, 
that women did not require equal pay. Opinions of libertarian observers 
differed on the matter. Jose Peirats considered that the family wage was 
a way of meeting the desire for privacy and a more intimate way of life. 
H.E.Kaminski took a harder line, asserting that the family card put the 
most oppressed human beings in Spain - women - under the control of 
men. (io) He took this as proof that the anarchist communism of the 
village of Alcora had "taken its nature from the actual state of things". 

As a measure of reform, the new wages system had its positive 
aspect. At least tho right of women to the means of subsistence, whatever 
their role in society, was generally recognised; so was that of children. 
Peirats tells us that on the land, housewives were not obliged to work 
outside the home except when absolutely necessary (extras could be "call- 
ed up" by the town crier to work in the fields in case of need)* and 
pregnant women were treated with special consideration. Daughters of 
peasant families were no longer forced to go into service in the cities 
or abroad. Covered by the family wage, young women sometimes donated 
their labour to make uniforms - a reminder that the size of the wage packet 
was not now of such vital concern to workers. The situation had a 



- k - 

degree of - flexibility allowing for more choices than before, despite 
the continued division of labour which assigned all household tasks 
to women. 

Perhaps the principal, factor lessening the alienation of wage-labour 
(for the anarchist ideal of a wageless, indeed money- free society was not 
found practical given the limited and fragmented nature of the revolution) 
was the chance to participate in collective decision-making. The policy 
and practice of each collective would be decided by its General Assembly, 
which usually elected a Committee of Admini strati on. The extent to which 
women were involved directly in determining their own status is uncertain. 
Hugh Thomas reckoned: "It is not clear if every member of the collective 
was sometimes included, even women (sic) and at any rate working children, 
or whether* as is more likely, only workers were expected to attend." 
This would be a serious indictment of the collectives if taken literally, 
•but Thomas groping toward an inkling of what makes libertarians tick is 
not the most reliable interpreter. 

Gaston Leval in Collectives in the Spanish Revolution (translated 
by Vernon Richards, Freedom Press, 1975 » pp207-2I3), reports the meeting 
of a village assembly attended by "about 600 people including some 100 
women, girls and a few children". Business included a proposal to 
"organise a workshop where the women could go and work instead of wasting 
their time gossiping in the street. The women laugh but the proposal is 
accepted." There also arises "The nomination of a new hospital director 
(and we learn that the director is a woman, which is fairly unusual)". 
He records the obvious interest and involvement in the discussions, to 
the extent that "no one left before the end... No women or child had gone 
to sleep". Women might generally be present, then, but not necessarily 
on an exactly equal footing with men* 

Even so, Thomas has noted the "absence of the whole complicated appa*- 
ratus -of trojrLtixfnal Catholic living and of all the things that went 
with it (such as the subordination of women)" as a factor that sustained 
persistent exhilaration for the vast majority of workers. Assumptions 
about female functions and femininity were not, of course, rejected 
overnight. Leval has written about women shopping for provisions, dress 
shops making fashionable clothes for women and girls, young girls being 
taught how to sew clothes for their future children, among other un- 
questioning reflections of "the actual state of things". But the impress- 
ion of significant changes in attitudes and in the general social atmos- 
phere is conveyed by many first-hand observers. 

As early as August 1956, Franz Borkenau (il) noted the self- 
assurance of women in Barcelona, hitherto unusual for Spanish women in 
public. Militia girls invariably wore trousers, which had been unthink- 
able before? but even when armed, Spanish women were still chaperoned, 
unlike the female volunteers of other nationalities. In Madrid, too, he 
found the changed position of women conspicuous; young working-class 
girls were to be seen in hundreds, perhaps thousands, collecting for 
International Red Help. He describes their obvious enjoyment of what 



- ? - 

was for many a first appearance in public - collecting in couples, 
going up and down streets and into elegant cafes, talking uninhibitedly 
to foreigners and militia-men. 

All the same, and in spite of other commentators' occasional 
mutterings about "promiscuity", he considered there was a general absence 
of any deep upheaval in sex life, less than in the Great War. But there 
was at least a tendency to dispense with or simplify the legal form- 
alities. In place of marriage, anarchists favoured a Free Union based 
on mutual trust and shared responsibility; the bond between lovers 
was in many situations regarded as equivalent to the marriage tie. 
In collectives, according to Leval, the legal marriage ceremony per- 
sisted because people enjoyed it as a festive occasion - comrades would 
go through the procedures, then destroy the documentary proof. , 

The collectives embodied their own pressures to conformity, not 
only in the matter of work, which was expected to be taken seriously, 
but also in sexual matters. People who got married were often awarded 
gifts, extras and help with housing; on the other hand, the collective 
had the power to with-hold privileges, such as the means to travel to 
town, if the purpose was considered unsuitable. Kaminski saw the village 
committee of Alcora in the role of pater familias; he quotes a member 
of the collective as saying, "There is no money for vice". Survivals 
of traditional attitudes included the curious assumption in some coll- 
ectives that separate dining rooms were necessary for men and women, 
as required by human dignity. Segregation was also practised in the 
home for destitute children in Madrid, where boys were lodged, fed and 
taught, by a staff of women teachers, in the Palace Hotel, and girls in 
another building. 

With all its limitations, the Spanish Revolution in its first 
phase brought new possibilities for women, in the zones not taken over 
by the Nationalists, and an element of personal liberation for some. 
One group which attempted to get a libertarian perspective on the sit- 
uation was Mu.jeres Libre s (Free Women). By the end of September 1936 
it had seven Labour Sections - Transport, Public Services, Nursing, 
Clothing, Mobile Brigades for non-specialists, and brigades able to 
substitute for men needed in the war.(l2) The federation grew, organ- 
ising for women to make the maximum contribution to whatever practical 
work had to be done. Its members saw themselves as having an important 
educational function, working to emancipate women from the traditional 
passivity, ignorance and exploitation that enslaved them, and towards 
a real understanding between men and women, who would work together 
without excluding each other. They saw a need to awaken women to vital 
consciousness of their movement, and convince them that isolated and 
purely feminine activity was now impossible. They saw themselves as 
based on comprehensive human aspirations for emancipation, realisable 
only in social revolution, which would liberate women from the stag- 
nation of mediocrity. ■ - . ■■ 



- 6 - 

. Politically *_j:ti*e .slogans of liujeres Litres described the situation 
simply," as;©- struggle .between -two classes and two ideologies: labour 
against privilege; liberty against dictatorship. It was to prove rather 
more complicated. The characteristic anarchist mixture of high- flown 
rhetoric, sketchy theory and intensive practical activity did not match 
up to /the -exigencies of grim political reality, despite the real 
achievements, of the group under difficult conditions. 



MMBM # mm 

Of course, the Nationalist threat was forcibly present, providing 
at first a stimulus as well as menace to revolutionary action, as people 
took the fight against it in their own hands. The stand made for Madrid 
against the Rationalist army in early November 1936 renewed the spirit 
of the immediate response to the military rising, and again women played 
as great a part as in the first days of the war. A women's battalion 
fought before Segovia Bridge. At Gestafe, in the centre of the northern 
front, women were under fire all morning and were among the last to 
leave. In the retreat to Madrid, occasional militia-women were to be 
seen - some more soldierly in appearance than the men, others neat, 
groomed and made-up, a male observer noted. (13) With the Italians 
of the International Column in Madrid was a sixteen-year-old- girl from 
Ciudad Real, who had joined up after her father and brother were killed. 
She had the same duties as men, shared their way of life, and was said 
to be . a Crack shot , 

Inside the city, women organised mass demonstrations, devised 
propaganda and slogans including the famous "No Paseran" ("They Shall 
Not Pass", accredited to La Pasionara) , and built barricades, often 
with the help of children and sometimes under fire. Committees were 
sel up based on districts, houses and blocks, for the provision of 
food, ammunition and communications. Women contributed actively to the 
defence, including anti-aircraft observation and-- surveillance of fifth- 
column suspects. Their committees organised collective meals and laun- 
dry; the creches and maternity homes set up between July and October 
carried on as best they could. Broue and Temime have describee, the 
spread of House and Neighbourhood Committees as amounting to a second 
Madrid Revolution, the basis of a genuine Commune. 

Simultaneously, women often had to bear the brunt of hardship, 
risking violation of the curfew regulations which barred them from the 
streets before 6 a.a.,in order to get a good place in queues for food 
(the first place the next day went to those not served). Wives were 
told that they must be ready to take the men's lunches not to the fac- 
tories but to the trenches. (14) Working-class women carried hot 
meals to the barricades. More middle-class women ran soup kitchens 
for refugees and first-aid stations for victims, of fifth-column 
sniping. 



- 7 -- 

^ Not everything done by women, however, can be seen in the same 
positive light. Accounts of recruiting processions of women, marching 
through -he streets and calling idlers out of cafes, can be unpleasantly 
reminiscent of the erstwhile Suffragettes' white-feather chauvinism 
during the First World War, This impression is enhanced by a consider- 
ation of the attitudes evinced by Dolores Ibarruri, who became prominent 
as La Pasionaria about this time, her voice incessantly on loudspeakers 
in the streets and on Radio Madrid, urging women to fight with knives and 
boiling oil against the invader. The struggle against the Nationalists 
began to be posed in neo-nationalist terms, as the true patriotism - 
a recurring historical motif - instead of in class terms against re- 
action. By now the pressure to unite and fight against the fascists 
was beginning to threaten the gains of the revolution itself. 

TMftUDM 

As the initial revolutionary impetus slowed, and the forces on the 
Republican side geared themselves to the task of winning the war, the 
contribution made by women did not diminish, but became more support- 
ive in character. By November, according to Gilbert Cox, there were 
some militia-women still in the front rank, but their numbers were now 
few; they were more usually to be found as orderlies, cooking and wash- 
ing behind the lines. George Orwell corroborates that by late Decem- 
ber, there were still women serving in the militias, although not many. 
He adds that attitudes to them had changed. In the early days, many 
women had gone to the front as soon as they could get hold of a mechanic's 
overall (15) f the sight of armed women won applause and admiration where 
it was not taken as a matter of course. Whereas then, no-one would have 
seen anything comic in a woman handling a gun, militiamen now had to-be 
kept out of the way when women were drilling because they tended to 
laugh at the women and put them off. One POUM (Partida Obrera de Unif- 
icacion Marxista - Workers' Party of Marxist Unification) position on 
Orwell's section of the front ims an object of fascination because of 
thee militia-women who did the cooking, and was put out of bounds to 
men of other companies. 

The difference from the atmosphere of a few months earlier might 
be manifested in changes of dress - reappearance of garments that might 
be considered -"bourgeois" , girls in Barcelona in January »37 no longer 
hesitating to wear their prettiest clothes (l6) - or manners, with 
"comrade" no longer the only acceptable form of address (17), but it 
had a political context. "Dual Power", when the collectives co-exist- 
ed with a largely ineffectual government, had given way to the Popular 
Front government's consolidation and extension of control. The inform- 
al leadership of the CNT-FAI had decided to enter the government, (is) 
With more or less heart- searching and rationalisation, they participated 



- 8 - 

in the legalising, take-over and eventual suppression of the revolut- 
ionary gains, and paved the way for the Communist Party. 

Federica Montseny, after some hesitation, accepted the appointment 
of Minister of Health. Coming from an anarchist family background, she 
had "become prominent in the PA I and was regarded as one of the best 
orators of the movement. Later, she was to win the reputation of being 
the only government Minister prepared to discuss the participation 
frankly and critically (19), even if not unequivocally. Her utterances 
include claims that the CNT were quite ingenuous in politics; that direct 
intervention in the Central Government was considered as the most far- 
reaching revolution made in the political and economic field; and that 
the state had been conceded a little credit and confidence in order to 
achieve a revolution from above. 

At best, some reforms were achieved: legalisation of abortion, 
under controlled conditions, and the -setting up of refuges open to all 
women, including prostitutes. Federica Montseny opposed the idea of 
dealing with prostitution by law, believing that it "presents a problem 
of moral, economic and social character, which cannot be resolved juri- 
dically 11 (20). A law of the Republic in June 1935 had banned prostit- 
ution, in such a way as to penalise the women concerned; during the rev- 
olution emphasis was more on educating out of prostitution, but it was 
not eliminated. (21 ) The extent to which the Minister of Health was 
herself committed to farther-reaching sexual revolution is doubtful, in 
the light of an interview vrith Kaminski, (22) -Here she appeared as 
permissive towards birth control, but did not think that Spanish women 
would wish to use it (though there was probaly an element of realism in 
this), did not believe in easy divorce, and considered that women would 
always enjoy "compliments" (i.e. sexist comments), incredulous at the 
suggestion that these might be thought insulting. Apparently she did, 
however, support the dissemination of birth-control information, as did 
Mu.1 ere s Libre s . 

\ The government also took steps to regulate marriage customs. Mar- 
riages had been celebrated at militia headquarters with the minimum of 
bother; those dating from July 18 or after were recognised as legal. (25) 
In April 1937 "marriage by usage" was instituted, whereby co-habitation 
for ten months, or less if pregnancy occurred, was considered as marr- 
iage. This decree was reversed due to the ensuing prevalence of bigamy. 

As well as attending to details of social life, the government 
was preoccupied with the organisation of the war effort. A more 
"normal" war-time situation was setting in, with women coming to the 
fore to make up lacks in manpower. Another war-time feature was the 
inevitability of shortages. In the absence of . rationing, women had to 
form queues for bread from 4 a.m. (although on Sundays the queue might 
be of women and men in equal numbers.) Food queues were controlled and 
harassed by Civil Guards on horseback (24), and in two serious bread, 
riots .in Barcelona early in 1937 1 crowds of mostly women were dispersed 



;•:. >■ . " '■ . • , - 9.- 



^ _ . t 



by rifle "butts. Between July '36 and March '37 the cost of living 
" doubled while wages rose by only 15$. In April * 37 women in Barcelona 
held a demonstration on the issue of food prices. 

To the external causes of hardship were added the developing con- 
flicts within the anti-fascist camp. The Communist Party, an insignif- 
icant group in Spanish politics at the start of the civil war, was 
extending its sphere of activity and tightening its hold on the Republican 
forces, backed by Russian military and political intervention. Women 
were a priority target, along with youth and cultural circles, when it 
came to making converts. Front organisations included the Union of 
Girls, Anti-Fascist Women, and the Union of Young Mothers. In July '37 
JSU (Union of Socialist Youth) cells included 29,021 among women. (25) 

A physical clash came in the Barcelona May Days, 1937, when an 
attack on the Telephone Exchange by government forces intent on "disarm- 
ing the rearguard" provoked fierce resistance. Once again the value of 
libertarian participation in government - for the government - was dem- 
onstrated. At a time when, after three days fighting, it has been est- 
imated that libertarian comrades and the POUM controlled four- fifths of 
Barcelona (26), the CNT-FAI leaders were called in to cool the situat- 
ion. Appeals from Mariano Vasquez, Secretary of the National Committee 
of the CUT, and Garcia Oliver, an anarchist Minister of Justice, failed 
to pacify the workers. Federica Montseny was then sent on behalf of the 
Valencia Government (it had moved from Madrid with the Nationalist ad- 
vance;, after troops had been withdrawn from the front to send to Barce- 
lona if necessary. She had obtained the government ' s agreement that 
"these forces were not to be sent until such time as the Minister of 
Health should judge it necessary to do so", thus envisaging the possi- 
bility that an anarchist Minister might give the O.K. for troops to be 
Used against the working class. The net result was confusion, demoral- 
isation, and concessions from the CUT side. 

The "leading militants" seem to have taken the view that it was 
playing the enemy's game to give the Communist Party an excuse for 
attacking its opponents. Whether or not it needed an excuse, the fizz- 
ling out of the May Days' brief explosion enabled the CP to strengthen 
its position, forcing the anarchist Ministers into opposition and pro- 
scribing the POUM. Women were among its victims - those arrested in- 
cluded hospital nurses and wives of POUM members. Emma Goldman visited 
six female "politicals" in the women's prison, including Katia Landau, 
who urged anti-fascist prisoners to hunger strike and was herself re- 
leased after two hunger strike s. 



- 10 - 



Internationally, the appeal of the Spanish Civil War was compound- 
ed of romantic exhortations and invocations of legality which soon ob- 
scured the revolutionary aspects of the struggle in "anti-fascist" 
rhetoric. This was the deliberate policy of the Popular Front/CP elem- 
ents (29), and to recognise it is not to disparage the motives of those 
who answered the call. The first English volunteer to be killed was 
Felicia Browne, a CP painter shot in Aragon in August. Other women 
among the early volunteers were Renee Lafont, a French socialist journa- 
list who died after being wounded in an ambush and captured, and Simone 
Weil, who was with the Durrutti Column in Catalonia from August to 
October '36* 

In Britain, a hodge-podge of supportive organisations were set up 
under various auspices, with women heavily involved. The Defendants' 
Aid Committee, for the welfare of British volunteers' families, was 
founded by Mrs Charlotte Haldane of the CP and counted among its supp- 
orters the Duchess of Atholl, Ellen Wilkinson and Sybil Thorndike. 
Another CP woman, Isobel Brown, was behind the British Committee for the 
Relief of Victims of Fascism, which inspired the creation of the British 
Medical Aid Committee and Medical Aid Unit. Mrs' Leah Manning, a British 
Socialist ex-MP, was in the last civil plane to reach Madrid when it was 
threatened, and offered her services as a propagandist in Britain for 
the saving of the city. 

Libertarians were more aware of the social struggle. They were 
kept informed by the anarchist newspaper Spain and the World , which 
even included references to women from time to times a report from Muj- 
eres Libres; mention of the importance of mothers as educators, and the 
necessity of freeing them from religion; the caption to a picture - 
"Spanish Women, too, enjoy Freedoms The Church will dictate no more" 
(2-7-37). Emma Goldman, official delegate of the CKT-FAI in Britain, 
estimated in an interview .(8-1-37) that women had not yet been given the 
chance to contribute much, and were insufficiently awakened and advanced; 
she judged that - they had changed since 1929 however, becoming more 
alert and interested in social struggle. An article in the issue of 
24-11-37 described the "Transformation of Spanish Women" in terms of 
former backwardness due to Arabian influence and the domination of the 
Catholic Church, maintained by masculine authority and female resig- 
nation, now giving way to a "magnificent and painful awakening". 

But even ft™™* Goldman and other writers in Spain and the World, 
despite their awareness of what was going on (e.g. 19-7-37, "Counter- 
Revolution at Work), tended to place increasing emphasis on "anti- 
fascism" first and foremost. The militarisation of the militias, attacks 
on, dissident elements, and suppression of the collectives left less and 



- "11 - 



less that* libertarians could point to as positive. At the same time, a 
paradoxical determination was engendered to foster the idea of a vital 
struggle against fascism, so that everything that had been gone through 
would not appear useless. Of course it was possible to take the posit- 
ion that anything was better than fascism, but the "anything" one there- 
by helped to bring about was not the social revolution. 



mm mm 



In the event, the question of exactly what order of disaster would 
have resulted from a Republican victory and the impossibility of re- 
viving a revolution that had been killed off, remained academic. In- 
stead, Spain was overtaken by the alternative disaster of a fascist 
victory. While left politics might not have brought about women's lib- 
eration, a right-wing regime meant its antithesis. 

But there were women on the fascist side, not all of them duped or 
submissive auxiliaries. The Falange included women's movements, both 
Carlists and Falange had women's unions, and the Nazi Women's Organisat- 
ion was active in Spain. Pilar Primo de Rivera was prominent in one of 
the factions opposed to Franco among the ideological assortment in the 
Nationalist camp, and ran the Auxilio Social founded by the widow of a 
Falangist leader in 1936. This organisation mobilised women for social 
work with means provided by Falangist women. Later, formal social ser- 
vice was instituted for women aged 17 to 35. In theory voluntary, a 
minimum of six months' continuous service or six successive periods of 
at least one month became a pre-requisite for taking exams and getting 
administrative jobs. Married women, widows with one child or more, and 
the disabled were exempt, in accordance with reactionary assumptions 
about the "sacred warmth of the family" and the position of women in 
the home. 

Women provided the Nationalist army with the usual nursing, cook- 
ing and laundry services, and a few may have served in the army as such 
go;,- but their participation was less noticeable on the right than on 
the left. The contrast was remarked. In Vigo, occupied by the Nation- 
alists, scarcely a woman was to be seen out in the streets. (31) The 
Nationalists too were aware of a difference: a memo found on one of 
their officers recommended that since large numbers of women were fight- 
ing on .the enemy side, there was to be no distinction of sex in repres- 
sion. . Some did make a distinction, reserving special vituperation for 
the women who opposed them - most notorious was General Queipo de Llano, 
who raved against them and threatened the "wives of anarchists and com- 
munists" (significantly not assumed to be anarchists and •communists in 
their own right) in his radio broadcasts from Seville, in terms that 
nave been characterised as "sexual psycho-pathology". 



- 12 - 

Less hysterical forms of counter-liberatory action were practised 
and -preached from the start, from suppression of the Republic's secular 
measures, including divorce, to a purity campaign on matters of dress, 
and the banning of bare legs. Spanish women were to be conditioned to 
accept a traditional submissive role. School was seen as an institution 
where young girls could learn their "lofty duties" in family and home. 

This emphasis has continued, although economic pressures have led 
to more women working outside the home, To bring the story more up to 
date, a general book on Spain published in 1969 (32) gives some facts and 
figures j ■ ; ■' . 

a) the percentage of Spanish labour made up by women rose from 
Tfo to 17$ between 1950 and 1 96 5 - this compares with 2jfo in 
Italy, 31$ in UK; 

b) three-quarters of women employed were in the most menial, 
mechanical, low-paid work, although there was no legal dis- 
ability as such; 

c) only between a quarter and a third of university students were 
women, although equal numbers of boys and girls went to first 
schools ; 

d) there were three women professors, three women in the Cortes; 

e) a husband's formal permission was required before his wife 
could take a job, and might be with-held because the marriage 
allowance, payable after a second child, was forfeited if the 
wife worked. 

Women have continued to resist. When the Republic was defeated, 
many joined the stream of refugees, opt?lng for exile. At the French 
frontier, women and children were separated from men, to be housed in 
barns and empty buildings, vromen were given 8 francs a day, enough to 
buy food when pooled, and communal kitchens were set up. Later, women 
were interned at Argeles-sur-Mer, where there was a high rate of infant 
mortality. Such an existence was nevertheless prefered to life under 
fascism; incidents were recorded of women committing suicide with their 
children from a train returning refugees to Spain from occupied France, 
(33) Isabel de Palencia, who had been Minister Plenipotentiary for 
.Republican Spain to Sweden and Finland from 19 36 to 1939 and lived in 
exile in Mexico, wrote in 1945 that there were still eight jails for 
women political prisoners in Madrid. She cited a Falange newspaper re- 
port of a baptism ceremony in I94Q for 280 infants bom in jail 

More than twenty years later, Miguel Garcia dessz'ibedihjDW 
wives of political prisoners had occupied churches in support of a hung- 
er strike, and had to be dislodged by the forces of public order. (34) 
Lists of recent arrestees in recent years have included women, eg. 
Front Libertaire des Luttes de Classes , February '75, gives the names of 
three women among "Twenty Revolutionary Militants who could face the 
death penalty". The odds against them may be judged from the following: 

"In Spain it is still part of the Civil Code that 'for reasons of 
matrimonial harmony, the husband is the decision maker as his natural, 



- 13 - 

religious and historical right 1 . .. A Spanish married woman needs her 

husband's written permission to transfer property, appear as a witness 

in court, apply for a passport, sign a contract, or start her own hank 
account* 

No statement in Spain may he spoken or written in favour of div- 
orce, abortion or the use of contraceptives. The penalties for taking 
part in feminist action are so severe as to be incredible. Simply par- 
ticipating in a discussion of women 1 s problems can result in several 
years in jail. 

Recently, a Spanish woman was sentenced to two years and four 
months in prison after police discovered feminist literature in her flat. 
Her husband, who was apolitical, was given the same sentence. According 
to Spanish legal theory a woman cannot act on her own, her husband must 
therefore be responsible for her actions." 

" Freedom . 4.11,72, based on a report in 

Ramparts 



eoMusjojys 



Until comparatively recently, it was almost necessary to justify 
the term "Revolution" in connection with the Spanish events of 1936 and 
after, so thoroughly had the social aspects of the struggle been ob- 
scured. (35) It might still have to be defended against purists who 
disparage the collectivisation as "self-managed capitalism". Even if 
this description were strictly accurate from a narrowly economists 
viewpoint, to deny any other significance to what happened would be to 
adopt blinkers. Neither can the failure to abolish "legitimate" govern- 
ment negate the value of the experience - "dual power" is a feature of 
revolutions. In spite of - and because of - its limitations, the Spanish 
Revolution requires and repays critical study. 

In times of intensified social change, especially war and revolut- 
ion, women are generally seen to be fulfilling new roles, acquiring a 
new view of themselves, and forcing changes in society's view of them. 
This can be taken as an index of the extent to which they are suppress- 
ed and resticted in "normal" times, and the consequent waste of potential. 
Reversion to normality often brings women back to their former position, 
or near it. The demonstration of what women can achieve is effectivelv 
forgotten - which is one reason for documenting and analysing such per- 
lods. The history of women, however, has to be rescued not only from 
obscurity, but from two contrasting strands of attention it receives 
from time to times tire piitronijsxngJLineabout women doing a grand job 
being one hundred per cent behind the men (where else?); and the counter- 
tendency, which occasionally comes over in women's liberation writings, 



- 14 - 

to regard everything done ty women as good and beautiful by definition. 

In Spain, then, women were involved on all sides - no surprise, 
but perhaps worth making explicit in view of current slogans about "supp- 
orting our sisters irustruggle" and the assumption that difference of sex 
is somehow fundamental. Did women in the Spanish Revolution have less - 
fundamentally - in common with men who shared their class situation and 
political commitment than they had with their notional "sisters" on the 
fascist side? All those women might have suffered in some degree from 
male domination, but there was no perspective for their uniting on that 
basis to achieve liberation. 

On the other hand, liberation was not achieved by the spontaneous 
working out of social contradictions, even with the assistance of a 
strong libertarian movement. It may even be correct to judge, as Temma 
Kaplan did (36), that "There is no reason to believe that the condition 
of Spanish women would have been fundamentally changed if the anarchists 
had won the war". But it is difficult to project the precise implicat- 
ions" ~bf such a victory, and in my view she tends to exaggerate the re- 
luctance of libertarians to envisage changes in sex roles and values. 
Nevertheless, her article, raises important points, indicating the fac- 
tors which prevented the transformation of the lives of Spanish working- 
class women. 

The inhibiting factors were rooted in the pre- revolutionary situa- 
tion^, libertarians ^were aware of how capitalist society exploited 
women, but, to quote Temma Kaplan, "They did not develop a programme to 
prevent similar exploitation in revolutionary society." The liberation 
of women had not been thought in theoretical and practical terms. It is 
not clear whether the moves towards more liberated sexuality were due 
to much more than a refusal of church and state forms (marriage). The 
wilful lack of clarity which bedevils libertarian movements, and was to 
prove fatal in confrontation with the hard politics of the CP, had con- 
sequences here too. And if libertarians failed to confront their in- 
ternalised repression, for the majority of the population the weight of 
inherited tradition must have been practically overwhelming. 

In Temma Kaplan's view, women revolutionaries subordinated their 
specific demands in the interests of winning the war; she implies a con- 
trast between this policy and that of the anarchists as a whole. In 
fact, anarchists in general did go along with the Popular Front to a 
great extent. Eventually, they voiced their differences with the CP and 
made the conflict for a time explicit - but their libertarian programme 
was subordinated and submerged. Their revolution was lost a considerable 
time before the war was lost. Glossing over real differences for fear 
of dividing the movement means that the tougher, dominant ideology tri- 
umphs, by default: authoritarianism wins over libertarian socialism, 
male domination over women's liberation. This lesson is particularly 
relevant to movements orientated against what appears as an obvious 
"greater evil". 



- 15 - 

The fate of women in revolution is closely connected with the fate 
of the. revolution as a whole. In Spain, there were initial gains, even 
if. partial, limited and fragmented (it could be argued that the lives of 
Spanish men were not totally txcusformed either); stabilisation set in 
with the wartime situation, to be followed by reverses; defeat brought 
reaction. But the fate of women must not be left as a neglected, sub- 
ordinate factor, or the social revolution, as well as the women's cause, 
will be diminished and damaged. 

More relevant for us than the question of what might have happened 
if... , is the question of what happens now. There are some grounds for 
calculated optimism : society is that much more advanced, the crisis of 
authority that much more acute, Recent years have brought the develop- 
ment of the women's liberation movement, raising issues of inescapable 
significance for all revolutionaries, and furthering discussion of them. 
At least there are some things our male comrades could not now get away 
with, and, it is to be hoped, would not wish to impose. And - again 
hopefully - we have the beginnings of a libertarian movement which can 
expect to have credibility and to develop towards a new vision of society 
only_ if the liberation of women is an integral part of its perspectives./ 



ACTOTLEDGEMKNT 

Thanks are due to all those who lent "books and other material, 
also to comrades at Freedom Press for the chance to peruse their files 
of Spain and the World, and to a correspondent in Mujeres Libre s in 
Exile, — d 



NOTES 



I. Good examples of what can be done in this field ares Edith Thomas 
The Women Incendiaries (New York 1966, London 1967 - about the 
Paris Commune) and Sheila Rowbotham's work, e.g. Women, Resist- 
ance and Revolution. . . < 

2» Arthur Koestler gives the average daily wage of an agricultural 
labourer as 3 pesetas, equal to about i/- at the time (Spanish ■ 
Testament. Gollanz, 1937), and a" women*' s~ wage as half that, ie, 
6d for working from sunrise to sunset. Burnett . Bolloten^ lThe « 
Grand Camouflage. New York, I96l) cites the instance of a.Seville 
village where women gathering chick-peas from 3 a.m. till 12 noon 
earned one peseta. 



- 16 - 

3. One of the many "incident s" of the early 303 was the shooting of 
Juanita Rioo, a Young Socialist, by Pilar Priiao de Rivera (daughter 
of the former Dictator and sister of the Falangist leader) - 
70,000 attended the funeral. In June 1936 Dolores Ibarruri was , 
one of the -17 CP delegates in the Cortes; her autobiography (They 
Shall Not Pass , New York ? 1966) gives details of political activity 
by Spanish women "Against War and Fascism", ie„ in CP orientated \ 
organisations. ' ! 

4. An impression of anarcho-syndicalists ! attitudes to women is con- 
veyed in the novel Seven Red Sundays by Ramcn J. Sender (Penguin, 
1938). ■- \ 

5. George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia (Gollanc:., 1933); p 4 II in 
Penguin edition. , 

6. Gaston Leval estimated that women were getting equal wages in 
about half the collectives - extract frufl ggragge Liber-uairo in 
Sam Dolgoff, ed., The Anarchist Collectives; 'Wor kers 1 Self - Manage - 
ment in the Spanish Revolution. 193 5-33 (Free Life Editions, New 
York, 1974) -a very useful collection of material on the subject. 

7. Figures in Broue and Temime, The Revol ution ar.1 the "?v il r ar in 
Spain . 

8. Ibid., quoting Leval. 

9. "Anarchist Agrarian Collectives in the .Sparieb Civil Ear", in 
Raymond Carr, ed., The Republic and t'-j Civil Var :.:i Pppin (London 
I97I) 

10. Both. writers are among those represented in- .Dolsof f '. s- Anarchist 
Collectives . 

11. Borkenau, The Spanish Cockpi t (Faber 193?) 

12. Report from the Madrid group of Thieves Lib— 3 , in Spr.in sag the 
World . 25.8.37, which includes the statements of therr position* ■ 
More information on the group is given i:.i Xfi&S&J?* .Kaplan's article 
"Spanish Anarchism and Women's Liberation" f. Tourn a l of Contemporary 
History ," Vol.6, No. 2, 1971)'- a contiabu^icT3.S-ily rfCsvsnt to 
the subject of this pamphlet. 

• - 

13. See Gilbert Cox, The Defence of Madrid (Gollai.jz, 1937) 

14. Mundo Obrero , 7 •II. 36,. quoted in Hugh Tbcffiag, Ihe Spcnidi .Civil 
War. (Penguin 1965), p. 406. ----- 

15. Alvarez del Vayo, Freedom's Battle -(London -1940) 

16. Borkenau, p«I75« 



\ 

\ 



- 17 - 

17. See Orwell^ .pp. 8-9, on earlier atmosphere. 

18. The anarchists' role vis a vis the government is critically dis- 
cussed by Vernon Richards in Lessons of the Spanish Revolution 
(Freedom -Press 1972) . 

: 19- Burnett Solloten, The Grand Camouflage (New York I96I) - a thorough 
* *•-. . documentation of how the CP took over, 

20. Quoted by Temma Kaplan, J.C.H. VI,2,pI08. 

21. In besieged Madrid, according to Gilbert Cox, prostitutes were few 
but had little spare time. 

22. Quoted in Gilbert Jackson, The Spanish Republic and Civil War 
(Princetown 1965). The tone of this conflicts somewhat with Temma 
Kaplan's impression. 

23. Thomas, The Spanish Civil War , p.244. Actually, he writes "any 
marriage between militiamen", but it is doubtful whether the Repu- 
blic was that permissive, 

24. Orwell, ppI88-89. 

25. S.G. Payne, The Spanish Revolution (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, I97O ). 
This compares with 70,080 peasant cells, 14,21? students', and 
28,021 workers'. 

26. Leval, in Dolgoff 's Anarchist Collectives , p. 60 

27. _ Peirats, quoted by Vernon Richards, p. 13 3. 

28. Spain and the World . 10,12,37, 

29. As documented by Boll ot en and others. 

30. Temma Kaplan says, without giving a source for the statement, that 
they did (p.I06), but the phenomenon cannot have been widespread. 
See Thomas, The Spanish Civil War , p. 409, note 2, on the reaction 
of an Irish Lieutenant who fought for the Nationalists: "Women 

at the battle seemed to him the final degradation of the Republ- 
ican side." 

31. Koestler, Spanish Testament. Ibid, for description of de Llano. 

32. S.Clisso^ Spain (Thames & Hudson, 1969). 

— -33- Isabel-de Palencia, Smouldering Freedom (Gollancz, 1946). 



/ 



34. Miguel Garcia . ■_-. . Spanish Political Prisoners (Freedom Press 
1970) ' * 

35- See Noam Chomsky, "Objectivity and Liberal Scholarship" in 
American Power' arid the New Mandarins (.New York, I967). 



/ 36. J.C.H. 71, 2, p.I02. 









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Published by SOLlPftftlTY— ( Tfinrton) , c/o 123 Lathom Road, E.6. 
October 15, 1975- """* ~~~\ ■ 



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